


klondike

by deniigiq



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Boys In Love, Depression, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, IDENTITY SHENANIGANS, Identity Reveal, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Trauma, because Clint obvs, don't let the tags fool you tho this is a rom com, so much baggage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24242032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Nelson tolerated Clint as folks tolerate road cones.They were there. They were inconvenient. They were annoying. But ultimately, they weren’t doing any overt harm.Page, on the other hand, Clint thought, was in the process of hiring someone to kill him.(Clint falls hard for his lawyer's partner, but nothing can be easy for him (until it can be).)
Relationships: Clint Barton/Matt Murdock
Comments: 32
Kudos: 588





	klondike

**Author's Note:**

> don't mind me just over here pining for pining. This is entirely self-indulgent as I mourn the lack of hawkdevil in our present midst.
> 
> references to past suicidal behavior, people being triggered, and anxiety/panic attacks below ❤

“Barton.”

Clint looked up from staring at the cuffs around his wrists to the officer holding the door open.

“Kalamir,” he said sweetly.

The officer’s dead eyes remained deceased.

“Lawyer’s here,” she said.

Perfect. Right on time.

Good ol’ Nelson. Clint would have to put in an absurd reimbursement request to the Avengers offices to pay him for this one. He deserved at least time and a half for getting off his ass at o’ dark thirty and trundling all the way to Brooklyn.

“In here,” the officer said to Nelson in the hallway.

There was shuffling and quizzical sounds.

“No, _here_ , sir,” the officer repeated irritably.

“Oh, sorry. Apologies. My mistake.”

“Wh—no. Sir. Just—”

“Oh, dear. Could you please refrain from touching—”

The officer half-threw, half-dragged a suit into the room and slammed the door behind him.

Clint stared at the suit.

The suit blinked at him.

“You,” Clint said after a beat, kindly, with a finger to help. “Are not my lawyer.”

“Oh,” the suit said after a long beat. “My apologies. Must be the wrong room. Here, let me—”

The suit felt for the door with unsure fingers. Clint felt his eyebrows crawling up his forehead, higher and higher for each second the suit tried and failed to locate the knob.

He blinked. Then looked down at his hands, still cuffed to the table.

“These damn things,” the suit huffed.

Clint lifted his head from his cuffs and considered his situation.

To espionage?

Or not to espionage?

Now that was the question.

“I’m so sorry,” the suit said over his shoulder. “I’ll be out of your hair in just a second.”

He dropped his cane.

Clint watched it fall. The suit cursed and dropped down to feel for it, too. His fingers brushed it and it rolled away from him a little, but he caught ahold of it and swept it up neatly, making short work of feeling for the thing’s handle. This time, he threaded his hand through the loop at the top of it before standing up abruptly and slamming his head right into the doorknob.

The cane rattled.

The suit swore and clutched at his head.

Clint’s eyebrows couldn’t go any higher.

“Um?” he said. “Do you need some help there, buddy?”

“What? No, no—fuck. _Ouch_ —no, I’m good, Mr.--?”

Ehn. Fuck it. To espionage.

“Barton,” Clint said.

“Bart--?” the suit repeated. “Barton? Barton, Clint?”

Oh, okay.

Maybe not to espionage.

If he was recognizable to a blind man, he was pretty much out of this game already.

“Francis, actually,” he said.

The suit went still and confused. Clint almost felt bad for lying to him, except his confusion inspired him to turn back around Clint’s way and Clint finally got a decent look at his face.

Auburn hair. Square chin. Little bit of five o’ clock shadow that had missed the razor on the guy’s hurry out the door.

But most importantly: that neck.

Hoo boy. That _neck_.

Pale as the day was long with a little wisp of freckles on one side. There were two larger dark ones that Clint could make out clearly just over the edge of the guy’s harsh white collar.

Clint kept his face dead even.

Espionage it was.

There was no reason to announce for this poor man’s edification that Clint had an unfounded and uncontrollable attraction to redheads. Nope. No need. None, whatsoever.

Clint was a spy. A professional fuck up who’d fucked up in the right direction for long enough to acquire a modicum of respect in certain counterintelligence circles.

He could fuck up in the right direction right here, right now, if he so chose.

He could do that.

There was a commotion outside that inspired Freckled And Gorgeous to turn that pretty neck of his back towards the door. It opened abruptly and with a flurry of insult-trading.

And aw, hey! Lawyer!!

What’s up, lawyer?

“Oh my god, Matty, I told you I had it,” Nelson bustled, dressed not in a suit for once, but in a very intriguing blue flannel and jean ensemble topped off with a set of work boots that Clint was 99% sure lawyers of Nelson’s status needn’t own for anything more than the aesthetic.

“Is this our client?” Freckled And Gorgeous asked, bamboozled, the poor thing.

Nelson looked up from his crouch at Freckled And Gorgeous’s kneeling body and locked eyes with Clint.

They were very blue tonight.

That hair, on the other hand, was _incredible_. Nelson should wear it like that everyday.

Clint gave him a smile and a reassuring thumbs-up to convey this.

Nelson’s face went blank. He set a hand on Freckled And Gorgeous’s shoulder without dropping eye-contact.

“That’s him, pal,” he said. “That’s him.”

Clint recognized that he was supposed to be composing a statement here, but Freckled and Gorgeous was being very freckly and gorgeous and a man couldn’t be faulted for stumblin’ with those frames and them lips facing his way.

Nelson’s eyes were almost screwed shut with his deadly squint of irritation.

Freckled and Gorgeous kept twitching his head Nelson’s way and patting his arm, as though he could somehow sense Nelson’s mounting ire.

He called Nelson ‘Fogs.’

Ah. Adorable.

“Clint,” Nelson said firmly.

Oh, right.

“Write or I’ll do it for you,” Nelson said.

Clint thought that that tone was maybe a little unwarranted, but okay, sure, boss. Whatever you want, boss.

Freckles hid a _stunning_ smile behind a hand, charmed right out of his sweet little gourd at Clint’s wit. He turned that hidden sunshine onto Nelson and missed his poisonous stare in return.

One holding-cell release later brought Clint’s beautiful time with Nelson and his ”partner” to an unhappy close.

“Do this shit in the evening, Clint,” Nelson scolded him. “Do you know how much my cab fare is right now?”

No.

“And Matt’s. Do you know what a pain in the ass it is for him to catch a cab at these hours?”

“Let me get you a cab home, then,” Clint told dear, sweet Freckles and his pretty, pretty neck.

It had no business being out around these parts at this hour. God knew what might happen to it.

Nelson cleared his throat.

Clint snapped back to him.

“I will get arrested only between the hours of nine and five from here on out,” he swore.

Freckles stifled a giggle at his comic genius. Nelson’s expression only got darker in the harsh light provided by the station’s two overhead floodlights.

“Whatever,” Nelson finally said. “C’mon, Matty. Maybe we’ll get two hours of sleep before court.”

Matty. Aw.

“Nice to meet you, Matty,” Clint crooned as Freckles took Nelson’s arm and let himself be pulled none-so-subtly away from the Big Bad Wolf.

“Matthew,” Freckles said over his shoulder. “Or just Matt.”

“Or _Murdock_ ,” Nelson corrected. “Good _night_ , Clint.”

Uh-huh.

Sure, pal. Whatever you want.

“Clint,” Nat said, cradling a cup of coffee on the counter. “Tony’s gone through your reimbursement requests.”

Pft.

Good luck, fucker.

“And?” he asked, pawing around for another washer to bludgeon the sink handle with.

“He’s pissed.”

Psh. Good. As he should be.

“He wants you to do him a favor.”

That caught Clint’s attention. He took his focus off the goddamned handle to trace the lift of Nat’s eyelashes. It matched the peak of her nose.

“What favor?” he asked.

The bow in Nat’s lips matched the peak of her nose and the lift of her lashes. Her smile evened that out, though.

Tony was a mess on a good day and a hellhound on a bad one, and Clint wondered if maybe he should have brought a few of Lucky’s milkbones along for this meeting.

“He just _left_?” Tony raged. “How could he just leave? I offered him twice what Hogarth was paying, Barton. _Twice_.”

So…it turned out that Tony had it out for Nelson. As in, wanted him for SI’s legal team and would stop at nothing to make that dream a reality.

It was pretty impressive actually. Borderline suspicious.

Jeri Hogarth’s lawyers weren’t cheap. Not a single one of them. And most of them had even stayed on with her when she’d broken away from her former partners Chao and Benowitz, confident in her ability to continue to pay them the kind of fees which supported their lifestyles.

A handful didn’t follow their fearless leader. Clint’s lawyer, for example. The one Barnes and Wilson had introduced him to, after promising him that they knew a man who could work miracles. Nelson, they said, had represented Jessica Jones. He’d represented Luke Cage. Hell, he’d even taken a stab at representing the goddamn Punisher and had learned enough from those failings to go on and take Barnes’s hand and guide him out of federal custody like walking through a fuckin’ kiddie pool. 

_Cap_ trusted him. The Man with a Plan himself.

You couldn’t get better credentials than that. It only made sense that Tony wanted him and wanted him yesterday.

But that was the thing about Nelson.

He was funny. He didn’t smile and he didn’t share. And he didn’t fucking like any of them, Clint thought. Not a damn one. He tolerated Wilson. He was frustrated with Cage, agitated with Jones, and irritable on a good day with Cap. He’d picked Kate up for Clint a few times and he’d brought her home to Brooklyn with a face that said that if his conscious had been just a little more rickety around the edges than it was, then he’d have drowned her on the way.

It was hysterical.

Oh sure, he was polite about it. Like, polite in that dangerous kind of way. Kind of like a mom who told you sweetly to get your feet off the carpet, she was trying to vacuum.

Clint loved him.

Clint couldn’t think of a single person he’d trust more with his life. Not Nat. Not Coulson. Not Kate. None of them.

So he got Tony’s frustration here, but he was also secretly pleased as punch that Nelson refused to bow to more money than he could ever dream of.

A good egg, that guy. A _great_ egg. With a very fine freckled friend.

Clint had plans for that one.

“Tony,” he said.

“No,” Tony snapped. “You’re paying him. He’s talkin’ to you. Tell him I’ll triple my offer.”

Uh. Wow. Damn, you’re one ‘yes’ from millionaire status, Nelson.

“He’s not in it for the money, Tony,” Rhodey sighed from the other side of the office. He kept his head bowed and his arms over his chest, exhausted. “I told you this.”

“Think of what he could do to his offices with that kind of dough,” Tony said. “We can negotiate. I’d take him half-time.”

“He’s not interested in _money_ , Tony,” Rhodey repeated. “Him and that boy of his want _Fisk_.”

Fisk?

Wait. Fisk-Fisk? Like? The big guy? Mr. Pummel You With My Bare Hands and Campaign About It? That Fisk?

Tony sneered over his shoulder.

“I’ll buy Fisk then,” he said.

Clint did not laugh, only by the grace of God. If only, if only it was so easy to dispose of corrupt politicians. Oh, Tony. So naive under all those sheets of metal and dollar bills.

“Barton,” Rhodey said, “You don’t have to be here. I’m sorry, this guy’s got a bad case of not getting what he wants right now.”

No, no. It was fine. It was a great show.

“What—what if—hear me out—what if we told Nelson that we’d fund his little war against Fisk,” Tony said, abandoning Clint to go be in Rhodey’s personal space bubble. “What if, Rhodey. Just imagine for two seconds--”

Clint hadn’t realized that Nelson had a nemesis, honestly. He could totally see it, though. Nelson’s angry face up against Fisk’s smarmy one.

Ha.

With that kind of attitude, you’d think he was Dare…dev..

Oh.

 _Oh_.

_Shit._

Now that, Clint couldn’t have seen coming.

Oh wow.

Oh, _wow_.

It was all coming together now. Clint snuck a hand up to his face to cover his mouth surreptitiously.

He glanced over to Nat who met his eye with her arms full of very happy cat. Miho purred in her arms and rubbed against her shoulder.

“Out? Chat?” Clint signed at her through Tony’s scheme-making.

Nat hummed and then swung around to leave the room.

“Daredevil? Nelson?” Nat repeated out in the courtyard with the fountain.

“Galaxy brain moment,” Clint told her. “Freckles is his love interest, and he don’t want any of our lot talkin’ to him in case us magnets for danger drag him into it. It’s why he always comes to bail us out and none of us have every met Freckles before this.”

Nat pet her cat, staring.

“You’re a genius,” she said.

Oh. Well.

‘Genius’ was a little much. Clint would be happy with ‘socially aware,’ thanks.

“So what do you want to do about it?” Nat asked, allowing her only true beloved to wriggle out of her arms and drape herself over her shoulders.

“Not sure yet,” Clint said.

“You wanna fuck Freckles?” Nat asked.

“100%,” Clint sighed, “But only if him and Nelson aren’t any kind of committed.”

Nat thought about it with a frown.

“Only one way to find out,” she said.

Clint thought maybe he was reading the office’s name wrong.

“No,” Tony said next to him, vibrating, “That’s the one.”

Huh.

Nelson, Murdock & Page.

Clint could have sworn it was just Nelson & Murdock.

Karen Page pulled a gun on them as soon as they opened the door.

Karen Page was then dissuaded from this behavior by Nelson who stuck his head out of his office at the sudden yelling and came hurrying over to subdue his pal and shove her back into her own office. He plastered himself against the door while she put up a fight on the other side and told Stark to watch his fucking back.

Clint was charmed.

Word on the street was that Karen Page was the Punisher’s “associate.” Also known as ‘identified love interest, but we’re working on things, so in the meantime, touch upon pain of violent and drawn-out death.’

Clint approved now. They were a good match.

Stark was not aware of this helpful information, though. It was charming how little him and so many of the others knew about the currents and systems that ran underneath their squeaky-clean, gentrified version of heroism. That was okay. Clint and Barnes and Nat spent their time in the dirt so that those guys didn’t have to.

Nelson asked them what they were doing in his office and Tony explained that they were there on business.

Rhodey explained that Tony was there on business, the rest of them were there to reiterate Nelson’s decision to him ad nauseum until it finally penetrated his thick skull soundly enough to make a home inside his head.

Nelson was not impressed, but also not surprised. He sighed and asked if they could have this conversation in his office.

Clint was just stepping into it when he caught sight of Freckles opening his door quizzically. Page’s slammed open into his right on cue and crushed his fingers.

The silence that followed was awkward.

“Ouch?” Freckles said at length.

“OH MY GOD, MATT,” Page gasped. “I’m so sorry. Oh my god—”

“Is it bleeding?” Freckles asked, extricating his damaged, reddening knuckles from the door chaos.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Page swore. “Gimme, gimme, gimme. These _doors_ , I’m telling you. This is a building code violation. Gimme, we gotta wash it.”

She snatched Freckles’s brutalized hand and dragged him out of his office and down the hall out of sight, presumably to an office kitchenette. Clint heard the squeak of a faucet moments later. Nelson leaned past him with a frown.

“I’m…not dealing with that right now,” he said. “They’re fine. Come in. Close the door behind you.”

Nelson studied Tony over steepled fingers and Tony laid out his bargain.

“Triple,” Nelson said emotionlessly.

“That’s what I said,” Tony said.

“For half-time on your legal team,” Nelson deadpanned.

“That’s what I said,” Tony said again, nodding sagely.

Nelson said nothing for a long time. Clint looked around his new, much smaller, much tighter office. It was lined up every wall with books and reference materials and banker box after banker box of evidence. It was as though the evidence was seconds from spilling out into the hallway.

Kinda cozy.

Clint decided he liked it better than the old office with its huge glass windows and fancy partitions.

“Do I look like a pawn to you, Mr. Stark?” Nelson asked dangerously.

Tony considered him. Rhodey sighed.

“I’m going to answer that for you,” Nelson said. “No. No, I don’t. I appreciate your esteem in my work, Mr. Stark, but I’m happy where I am. If you or any of your associates require my assistance, you know where to find me. But in the meantime—”

“Foggy?” A voice called through the door. “Minor problem?”

Nelson paused and frowned.

“Apply pressure,” he called back.

“Not the problem,” Page said. “It’s, uh—”

“Not bending?” Freckles finished for her. “Maybe I should sit?”

Nelson squeezed his eyes shut and pressed fingers into his temples.

“One day,” he sighed. “Can I get just one day, God?”

There was a thud outside the door.

Apparently not.

Freckles was very pretty, and even prettier with his eyes closed like that and his glasses all askew.

His hand was swelling like it was its job. Clint could see it from here.

Oof.

Poor thing.

He helped Nelson scoop him up off the floor. He was kinda heavy for a skinny, nerdy guy, but no matter, Page was already on the phone to an advice nurse from the sound of it, saying things like ‘check his head? No, his head’s fine. Are you sure?”

Nelson considered his love interest/future love interest/”best friend” slumped against the office’s reception desk.

“You’re so dramatic,” he told Freckles’s unconscious face.

This was exactly the kind of reaction Clint had expected from the guy. And given his, ohoho, “secret” identity, Clint could see that he was disappointed in his sweet little buddy’s lack of pain tolerance.

Be gentle, my man. Them normals have feelings, too. Even bigger ones, sometimes, than our own.

“Claire’s on her way,” Page reported, joining the rest of them. “She says we should probably take him home for now.”

That was fair.

It was only kind and right to let a man vomit at his own porcelain altar.

“Do you need help?” Rhodey asked.

Both Page and Nelson waved him off. Matt, they said, didn’t live far away, and Nelson, in particular, was used to hauling him home after a hard night out. They’d manage, thanks.

“Are you sure?” Rhodey pressed.

They absolutely were.

“Well, alright then. I guess we’ll be going to leave you all to it,” he said, grabbing Tony by the hoodie to prevent him from hauling Freckles up in a fireman’s carry and waltzing out to street-level on his own.

Tony was that kind of guy in a pinch. Say what you want about him, but he wouldn’t run from trouble and he did actually know how to be helpful.

They left the firm to their blind attorney.

“Rhodey,” Clint asked around the block.

“It’s a bad idea,” Rhodey said automatically.

Clint snickered.

“Yes,” he said. “But real talk: did Nelson and Red Riding Hood back there look like they were together-together? Or just together?”

Rhodey stopped in the middle of the pavement and stared. Tony barked a laugh and slapped a hand on the back of Clint’s shoulder.

“You’re a bastard, Barton,” he said merrily.

“Clint, don’t do this,” Rhodey pleaded. “Just ask Natasha to flog you. It’s fine. No one’s judging.”

WOW.

“Listen,” Clint said. “A) None of your business. And B) I’m just _sayin’_.”

“I get it, man,” Tony said. “Redhead, am I right?”

Fuck you.

Alright, fine.

Yeah. Yeah, he was right.

“I don’t want to step on Nelson’s toes,” Clint said. “But I’m just _sayin_ ’. That boy of his is real pretty.”

“So ask him,” Tony said just as Rhodey said, “Do not engage. Repeat: do not engage.”

“I think I’m gonna,” Clint hummed.

Come on, Daredevil. Show us what you got.

Clint was a spy. He knew how to use Google. And a few other illicit search engines that no one else needed to know existed.

He started with Google, though.

He spent an hour admiring Matthew Michael Murdock’s smiling, clean-shaven face on his firm’s website and yelp page, and then spent a few moments giggling maniacally at a picture of Matthew Michael Murdock from about 4 years back at a fancy firm where he’d interned. And then he spent a good six, sober minutes staring at a black and white picture from a scan of an old newspaper which described a nine-year-old boy who’d gotten soaked in acid pushing an old man out of the way of an oncoming truck.

He was described as the ‘son of up-and-coming rookie boxer Jonathan ‘Battlin’ Jack’ Murdock.’

Seemed like the kid had never seen his father again. The man had gotten shot in the head a year later.

Man.

Now that was one hell of a backstory.

Clint felt a little bad for snooping now. He closed his laptop and watched Lucky make a home out of a days-old pizza box.

“I dunno, Luckster,” he said. “Maybe I should stop while I’m ahead.”

Lucky shuffled around off his side and then wagged his tail.

Clint watched him.

He dropped it.

Nelson’s boy was his boy. Daredevil’s love interest was his love interest.

The guy had already been through enough. He didn’t need to add ‘dated and fucked up by legendary Fuck Up Clint Barton’ to that list of trauma.

So instead, he went out and did some jobs and fought a few mobsters and a handful of gangsters and got laid out with a pipe.

It felt like a good enough punishment for having snooped on an innocent civilian out of lust.

He did not count on smashing through a storage container lock to find Freckles knocked out in the far corner of it, nearly completely in shadow, hidden among heavy bags of sawdust and sand that hid drugs and weapons.

Freckles was beat to shit.

Freckles didn’t move when Clint shook him and called his name.

He fell to the side and his nose bled sluggishly down the side of his face. Clint heard police sirens. He looked back at Freckles.

His wounds were…strange. Like someone had seriously beaten him. Like he’d had something that whoever it was who’d gotten their hands on him really wanted.

But Freckles was just…Freckles.

His fingers curled around nothing.

Clint dropped to his knees.

Wilson Fisk was taken into custody on suspicion of having kidnapped and tortured a blind lawyer who’d formed part of the legal team that had gotten him charged with money laundering, obstruction of justice, and murder in the second degree.

Freckles was in the hospital, having been photographed within an inch of his life.

He didn’t remember who’d been beating him.

Clint’s jaw worked at the thought that Fisk had known that Freckles wouldn’t be able to identify him.

That was just low, man. Lower than dirt.

Clint knew what it felt like.

He’d had his hearing aids torn out. He’d had blindfolds slapped on him. He’d been kicked in the chest and the gut and he’d been stabbed and he’d shouted out, unsure if anyone could even hear him scream.

It was.

Indescribable.

It was humiliating.

Dehumanizing.

It made him feel so small. And helpless. And weak.

Nelson was furious, but he was too close to the case to be allowed to argue it in the court of law. Page, Clint heard through the grapevine, was asking around if anyone had seen Fisk or any of the people working for him skulking around.

She was looking for witnesses with the power of the Punisher hovering over her right shoulder like a specter.

Clint watched her.

He didn’t like it.

Something wasn’t right here.

“You got a problem, there?”

He froze.

The Punisher smelled like oil and whiskey. Like car engine guts and cigarettes.

Clint hadn’t heard him creep up behind him.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

They were really in the shits this week, huh, Freckles?

“I ain’t want nothin’ to do with your girl,” he said carefully.

“That so? Why’re you stalkin’ then, Hawk?” the Punisher asked.

He sounded like something had burned his vocal cords so badly over the years that talking was a chore.

“I ain’t stalkin’,” Clint said. “Don’t want nothin’ to do with your people, Castle.”

“I dunno about that,” Castle drawled, finally stepping out from behind him and into his line of sight at the corner of his eye. “Word has it you caught feelings for the lawyer.”

Goddamnit, Nat.

“Had ‘em. Lost ‘em,” Clint said.

“Unlike you,” Castle hummed. He sniffed. “Lawyer’s one of Page’s. One of mine. You’re playing with gunfire, Barton.”

Psh.

Two could play at that game.

“You don’t get two, Frank,” Clint said, turning slowly and rolling his shoulders.

Castle snorted.

“I don’t want the lawyer,” he said. “He ain’t shit to me. I’m only bothered in so far as his death would upset the gal.”

…right.

So Freckles was worthless to the Punisher, too.

“He’s an innocent,” Clint said. “I thought you had a code.”

Castle laughed out loud.

“An innocent,” he scoffed. “Yeah, sure, Barton. You believe that. Whatever helps you sleep at night. An _innocent_. Adorable.”

“What do you know?” Clint asked.

Castle smirked at him. He was hulking and heavy-looking with a nose that had been broken time and time again.

“What’ve you got for me?” he asked.

Clint pressed his lips together.

He never claimed to be a saint. He’d never claimed to be anything, actually. Not even an archer. Not even an act. Those were names and designations given to him.

He went back to the scene of the crime and waited until the guard was changing.

He wore gloves when he eased the panel in the top of the storage container open. He dropped into it and was careful to land too softly to be heard.

He didn’t need to touch much.

There was only one bag big enough to contain the piece the Punisher asked him to retrieve.

Wilson Fisk made enemies left, right, and center. He stole from anyone and everyone, without a care for the hole he dug for himself.

It was bad news to be an enemy of the Punisher, though. That’s how people—big people, important people—ended up going down from a single bullet.

Clint wouldn’t try the guy and he was a professional. He didn’t have the bandwidth to be constantly looking over his shoulder for Frank Castle, but apparently Wilson Fisk was lacking in that kind of natural instinct.

The piece was heavy. Castle accepted with a blank face.

“You got yours,” Clint said.

Castle huffed a little laugh.

“So you want to know about Red,” he said.

Clint frowned.

“Murdock,” he said.

Castle flicked his eyes up at Clint without moving his head.

“Right,” he said, standing up straight. “I don’t got a whole lot to tell you, but I do got this: Murdock doesn’t need saving the way you think he does.”

“How so?” Clint asked.

“You know, for a notorious fuck-up, you’re a straight shooter, aren’t you?” Castle asked.

“How. So?” Clint pressed.

“Why don’t you ask him?” Castle hummed. “He likes you. Page says so. Why don’t you go try to hold his hand and see what happens?”

This was bullshit information.

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” Castle said. “Little Red is easy.”

What did that mean?

“Nice doing business with you, Hawkeye. Stay away from the gal.”

Wait. What did that _mean_?

Nelson closed the door in his face and told Clint that he was getting a restraining order placed on him.

It took some begging and promising, but eventually, he reconsidered it and allowed Clint inside.

Nelson’s apartment was nothing like Clint thought it would be. It was very…warm? For a guy all made out in cool colors, it was warm. Lots of orange. Lots of grey. Lots of purple. Nelson clearly had a theme going on here.

“What do you want, Clint?” Nelson demanded with his arms crossed at the entrance to the living room. Clint turned around to face him.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Clint told him.

Nelson rolled his eyes.

“You didn’t have to come here to say that,” he said. “You coulda called.”

Of course.

“Listen, Franklin—” Clint started.

“Foggy.”

Clint paused.

“What?” he asked.

“Foggy,” Nelson said. “Out of work, I go by ‘Foggy.’”

Oh. Right. Okay.

“Okay, uh. Foggy,” Clint said. “I know who you are. And I know about your guy. So just, let’s just drop the act, okay? There’s about to be a shitshow in these streets. The Punisher’s after Wilson Fisk and you can just imagine the--”

“Wait, no,” Nelson said, shaking his head. “Shut up. Go back. What was the first thing you said?”

Clint resisted the urge to fidget. He straightened his spine.

“I know who you are,” he said.

Nelson stared at him and after a long while, blinked.

“Duh,” he said.

Um?

“Of course you know who I am,” Nelson scoffed.

Wait, no. Clint wasn’t saying it right or something.

“I’m your lawyer. God, I hope you know who I am. Did someone bean you in in the head, man?”

No. No, no. This wasn’t right. That wasn’t what Clint meant.

“No, I mean _who you are_ ,” he said a touch desperately. “You know? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge?”

Nelson’s gaze was empty.

“Oh,” he said suddenly. “Yeah, Nelson like those Nelsons. My folks own the hardware store.”

Wh—

Wh--

WHAT???

Nelson had to be smarter than this? Was this bluffing? It didn’t sound like bluffing?

Was he _that_ good?

Should Clint—should Clint take notes?

“No, I—” Clint glanced around for bugs and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I know you’re Daredevil.”

The penny dropped.

Nelson’s stare went from flat to intrigued.

“Me?” he asked.

Clint hushed him.

“I’m Daredevil,” Nelson repeated, pointing a finger at himself. “Me.”

Clint waved at him to keep it down. Accusations caught on tape were one thing. Confirmations were a completely different ballgame.

Nelson laughed.

Clint went cold. He wanted. To throttle this guy.

Fucking Daredevil. God. Always making a joke of important shit. How fucking typical.

“I’m Daredevil,” Nelson gasped. “Me. _Me_.”

Why was this so funny?

“Oh god,” Nelson said, wiping at his eyes. “Oh, man. That’s great, Clint. Thank you, I think I needed that.”

Needed what???

“Your people are in trouble,” Clint told him. “You need to get it together. Someone’s gonna get hurt.”

Nelson barked another laugh.

“And here I thought you’d come here to ask if you could fuck my best friend,” he said.

Wh—what?

“Matty,” Nelson said. “You know? The one you found? The one who went to the hospital? He thinks you’re cute, and I’ve been telling him night and day, night and day that it ain’t gonna happen. And honestly, it really doesn’t need to. Matt’s got a track record for dating only hot, only shitty people, you know what I mean? Protecting him from himself is a full time job.”

Clint felt like a human blue screen of death.

Everything was happening. Too many things were happening. He couldn’t handle all this data.

“He thinks I’m cute?” his mouth went with.

Nelson’s face dropped flat again.

“Unfortunately,” he said. “He’s like a homing pigeon, but for bad decisions. He builds nests out of them, truly.”

H-how? What?

What was happening?

“Thanks for dropping by, Clint,” Nelson said. “But I think you mixed up your addresses.”

Oh.

Okay?

He allowed himself to be led gently to Nelson’s front door. All systems turned back on in the doorway.

“So is that a ‘no’ on me fucking your best friend?” he asked.

Freckles had been discharged from the hospital and lived a measly six blocks from Nelson.

He had his balcony window open. Clint could see him puttering around inside. He didn’t turn his lights on, understandably, but a huge billboard lit up the inside of the loft.

Clint felt for the real estate agent in charge of that place. Their tenant options were: one who was blind or one who was super into flavored vodka advertising.

Freckles eased himself down onto the couch inside the loft with effort and slowly laid all the way down.

Clint decided that being a bit of a creeper was probably allowed, so long as Freckles didn’t hear him or wake up. He waited about ten minutes, until the poor soul was at least partially into a REM cycle, before sneaking up the fire-escape up the guy’s window.

Up close, Freckles’s apartment was like an emptier, sadder version of Nelson’s. He’d burrowed himself under a weathered plaid blanket. His shoulders rose and fell rhythmically.

Nelson’s threats echoed in Clint’s head.

He claimed that no-strings-attached sex was fine, but deep emotional connection was out, out, out and banned, banned, banned.

Clint figured that for now, he could settle for just watching. It was kind of what he did. Hawkeye and all that.

He wanted to pet Freckles’s hair so bad, though.

So soft-looking.

Those moles on his neck were just mmph.

Clint chased the idea of biting them out of his mind with a mental spray bottle.

He was just watching. That was it.

He hugged a knee to his chest on the fire-escape and sighed. He could see the glow of the city up this high. It pulsed up towards the sky in yellows and whites. The billboard threw everything on that side of Freckles’s building into pink and purple and blue.

He watched the colors dance across his shoes, then sluggishly glanced behind him back to Freckles.

He wasn’t there.

Clint shot up reflexively and cracked the top of his head against a chin hovering over it that he sure as hell hadn’t been expecting.

He swore. Freckles swore.

“Oh my god,” Clint said, upon realizing what had happened. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

Freckles shook his head furiously.

“Who are you? How did you get up here? I’m calling the police, you creep,” he snapped.

Aw, fuck.

Aw, shit.

“No, no, don’t do that,” Clint babbled. “It’s me. I—uh. You know me. I’m, uh—”

Freckles recoiled from him.

“Bar…ton?” he asked.

His eyes were purple and gold in the light. They couldn’t find Clint’s face. They were so.

Open.

Lord, an angel or Jesus or someone would be _real_ helpful any time now.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s me,” Clint admitted lamely. “Sorry, this is weird. I get that. I shouldn’t have—”

“You saved me.”

He—what?

He turned back to see Freckles standing back with a hand over his heart.

“From Fisk,” Freckles said with thick eyebrows bent over those purple and gold and pink now eyes. “You saved me. I thought—I thought that was the end.”

Oh, man. That was.

That was—

“I didn’t save you,” Clint said. “I just found you. It’s diff—”

Oh.

Kissing now. Sure.

That was very nice.

Freckles was very good at it. His lips were warm and his fingers dug into Clint’s shirt and—woah. Hold up. No.

He cupped the guy’s elbows and gently pulled him away.

“Wow,” he said. “Uh. Let’s slow down there, cowboy. I, uh—”

Freckles threw a hand over his mouth.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—I made it weird. I made it so weird. I didn’t—I didn’t—I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry.”

Oh _no_.

He had a stammer.

Jesus. Lord. Fuckin’ Ironman--s _omeone_. Help.

“You can absolutely—absolutely tell me to fuck off,” Freckles rattled on. “So inappropriate. Uh. Maybe—maybe a drink? Can I offer you a drink?”

Clint cleared his throat and found it drier than a desert. He tried again and then tried to swallow.

“Yeah,” he eventually found the wherewithal to say. “A drink would be great actually, if you don’t mind.”

Freckles withdrew even further.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course, a drink. Please come in.”

One drink.

Freckles—Matt. Matt, he said to call him Matt, only had scotch and, hilariously, awful flavored vodka. The exact kind advertised out on that damn board out there.

He was embarrassed and nervous and kept dropping things.

Clint was going to die. This was how he died. A deaf man found dead in a blind man’s house.

What a headline.

What a way to go.

“Here, let me help,” he said, coming up behind Matt to steady his shaking fingers.

Apparently, this was too much.

Matt gave him the whole ice tray and scrambled to the other side of the kitchen to rattle through a cabinet for a glass. He forgot that they needed two.

He freaked out about that, too. And flung himself into another room to go relocate the one he’d given Clint’s twin.

Clint stood stock-still, glass in hand, as he watched the guy go.

One drink.

Really, two sips in awkward silence.

Then Matt set his glass on the counter. Clint followed suit. Nothing happened.

Then everything happened all at once.

Fingers buried themselves in Clint’s hair and his own hands found the back of Matt’s soft sleeping t-shirt. He was warm. He pressed close. He fit in all the spaces around his body that Clint didn’t fill himself.

He kissed like he’d been in a desert for ten thousand years.

His sides were warm under his shirt.

He had negligible love handles. Dimples in the small of his back.

Oh, god.

Clint was going to die.

Matt didn’t get that he was dying. He pressed even closer, making these muffled, breathy sounds. He was just a smidge short. At the smallest disadvantage here.

Clint could fix that.

Matt gasped when Clint ducked down and wrapped arms around the tops of his thighs. He wrapped his legs around Clint’s waist without needing to be asked. Clint sat him on the counter but let him keep the legs all tangled up as they were.

It was hot. The pressure on his back. Being in between this guy’s thighs.

They were really strong now that Clint could feel them. Warm and getting warmer as the muscle traveled upwards.

Huh. Did blind cutie work out?

Why’d he work out?

Maybe this wasn’t the first kidnapping.

Clint was distracted by the buck of hips against his abs. His brain stuttered for a second.

Welp.

This was it.

Sorry, Nelson.

The next day at the office was going to be awkward as hell.

Matt, Clint learned over the next half an hour, liked to be tall. And liked to be manhandled. And god, did he like it rough.

He wanted Clint to fuck him on the first date.

That was kind of a lot, but Matt goaded him, laughing.

“Just one drink, big guy,” he crooned, dragging fingers through Clint’s hair. “I know what I’m about, and I’ve had an eye out for you.”

It was a cute joke. But what was Clint supposed to say to that?

“No?” Matt asked, all breathy and close next to his ear.

“Gotta ask nicely, sugar,” Clint rumbled into those freckles on that pale, pretty, firm neck.

Matt sighed and then arched his body closer, pressing as much of him as he could against Clint’s chest.

“Fuck me nicely?” he asked, all darling and innocent.

Like a devil in disguise.

“Ask me again,” Clint hummed, trying not to let on how hot and bothered he was.

Matt caught his face between two rough, calloused palms.

“Fuck me nicely, Mr. Hawkeye,” he teased. “I got tomorrow off.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Clint said. “I guess I have no choice.”

Matt smiled against his lips.

“None,” he said, as Clint dropped him back on his bed.

Fancy sheets in a bare-ass apartment. This guy was a walking contradiction.

“None,” Clint agreed, pressing forward until their hips were once again settled into each other. Matt gasped softly.

“Foggy.”

Clint stopped dead. 

“Foggy. Foggy. Foggy.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Matt snapped, suddenly vicious. He pushed Clint off him and felt around the sheets until he found his phone. He accepted the call.

“What?” he asked, in the way that only a best friend could get away with. “Huh? No. Yes. Yes. YES, Fogs. I’m know. I’m fine. Go to sleep. Talk to you later— _talk to you later_.”

He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bedside table.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Where were we?”

Clint snorted a laugh.

“We were at the part where I take off your pants and make you whine,” he said.

“Oh,” Matt said lightly. “I love that part.”

There was a pause.

“Go on then, hop to it,” Matt said.

Clint couldn’t hold in the bubble of laughter. This one was a feisty one, and he was all about it.

He woke up warm. Unusually warm. With his lips sticking to hair that definitely wasn’t his.

It took him a beat to remember. He assessed the situation.

Matt’s back was pressed up against his chest. His arms wrapped around Clint’s own.

“Getting cold feet?” he asked suddenly, scaring the shit out of Clint.

“You’re awake?” Clint asked. “How long have you been awake?”

“’Bout half an hour,” Matt said, rolling languidly over to face Clint. His eyes were hazel. Flecks of green on top. Amber and brown on bottom. Like a forest.

The skin around them was a mix of colors and texture. Scar tissue whirled in eddies. The skin on the sides wrinkled into crow’s feet that were only partially genetic.

“You’re gorgeous,” Clint told him.

He got a smile.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” Matt said, pulling away and sitting up. “Foggy tells me that you’re blond. Blue eyes. Very tall.” He winked over Clint’s shoulder.

“Can I make you breakfast?” he asked.

Any time of the day, any day of the week, any week of the year.

Matt laughed.

“You’re fun,” he said, slapping Clint’s face before abandoning him to the silk sheets.

Clint rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

He grabbed his phone.

“I cannot believe you,” Nat sniffed, mollified only by the cat who she petted aggressively. Tony squint-glared from the other side of the counter.

There was a meeting.

The only people awake enough for said meeting were Clint and Banner, who was on his 4th cup of coffee.

“Everything I have ever dreamed of,” Clint told Nat.

“Nelson’s going to kill you,” Tony said.

Pft. Nelson knew what would happen. He was not an idiot. His best friend was hot as hell; he knew the burdens that came with that.

“How did you even manage it? You’re unspeakably unsmooth,” Nat huffed.

“I was so smooth last night,” Clint told her. “The smoothest I have ever been, _ever_ , Nat. Ever.”

“I guess even a stopped clock’s right at least twice a day,” Nat said.

Tony choked.

He deserved it.

Matt was.

So much.

He was everything Clint could ask for.

He was smarter than him. He was prettier than him. He was a redhead. He didn’t ask questions about Clint’s job. He was full of bad blind jokes. When Clint told him that he was deaf, he just laughed and said they had to band together to go fight the mute now.

For real: the perfect match.

But.

But his hands.

His _hands_.

They were always calloused. Their knuckles were always raw. Sometimes actively bleeding. They stained Matt’s sheets and he didn’t seem to notice.

He didn’t seem to notice a lot actually.

Like how the gauze on other parts of his body went pink and then red. Like how his shoulder sometimes popped or cracked loudly. Painfully. He didn’t acknowledge the constant bruises that ran up his sides and down his legs.

Clint held them in his own hands.

He asked.

Matt told him that he boxed.

He worked out and he boxed. It was important to him.

He didn’t say that his dad had been a boxer. Clint felt bad for not having to ask about it.

“You fightin’ guys bigger than you?” Clint asked him after having snuck up on Matt and captured him in a hug from behind.

Matt rubbed a cheek against his shoulder and beamed.

“Always and only,” he said. “Gotta be quick, you know. Fast and furious.”

Right.

Right.

Except the stab wounds didn’t come from boxing.

The road rash didn’t come from boxing.

Nelson’s frequent texts throughout the night didn’t seem boxing-related.

Something was off. And as beautiful and lovely and perfect as Matt was, straddling Clint’s thighs two nights a week, that something was starting to eat at Clint’s chest.

Like acid.

Nelson tolerated Clint as folks tolerate road cones.

They were there. They were inconvenient. They were annoying. But ultimately, they weren’t doing any overt harm.

Page, on the other hand, Clint thought, was in the process of hiring someone to kill him.

He thought that because Castle rolled on up to him and told him that if he fucked too badly with the ginger, then he would regretfully have to pull the trigger.

Clint let him watch him type those exact words into the notes app of his phone.

Matt was absurdly well-protected by his people. They were fierce. He had this one friend—Clare? Clara?—who came over once to ask Matt questions from the hallway and when she’d caught sight of Clint she’d made a cutting motion over her throat.

Civilians were terrifying.

Although, given the circumstances of Matt being a little oblivious and a lot blind, Clint could kind of understand this.

“What happened to you?” he joked once, holding out arms for Matt to join him on the couch in watching, or rather, talking through, a movie. “All your friends are walking mace spray cans.”

Matt smiled at him like he always did when he didn’t want to talk about something.

“I’ve had some bad mental health over the last two years,” he revealed softly. “But I’m getting better. Don’t worry.”

Clint frowned. Matt seemed perfectly stable to him.

He scooted up better on the couch and folded his hands at the small of Matt’s back when he settled down to join him.

“Tell me?” he asked.

Matt tried to find his face. His expression was unreadable. Slack.

“Can we not?” he asked.

Of course.

Clint found the lines in Matt’s wrists eventually. And he found the missing posters. And he heard Nelson chiding, telling Matt not to sleep too much, okay?

Matt refused to speak of those things.

He just kept repeating that he wasn’t ready to talk about it.

Clint’s heart hurt for him.

“There’s nothing you can tell me that will make me think less of you,” he promised the nape of Matt’s neck. “I’ve seen and been part of some pretty shit parts of humanity.”

Matt twisted around in his grip and pressed a light kiss to his lips.

“I know,” he said. “But you’re a hero, Mr. Hawkeye. State-sanctioned and everything.”

Clint didn’t understand.

Matt had things to do that night. He apologized that Clint couldn’t stay.

It was fine. Of course it was.

…was it?

Clint could feel his bouts of depression leaking into his life. Could pick them out about a week before they crash-landed, slowing the world down, making him feel like he was walking through tar.

He knew them.

He felt this one coming on.

He warned Matt. He told him that he just needed to work through this. He’d be okay. He just wanted to be alone right now.

It was funny.

Matt refused to speak of the lines on his arms or his flat-out disappearances from society, but the second Clint started to slip, he was there in full-force. Curled up in the hollow of Clint’s body. Chiding him gently to take a shower. To brush his teeth. He brought take out and bullied Clint out of bed so that he could replace the linens.

It was almost funny.

In that it wasn’t.

Matt knew what to do.

Matt clearly had a history of depression.

But Clint was tired and achy and heavy and the world seemed both impossibly huge and impossibly slow and impossibly fast and just. Rotting.

He couldn’t wade his way through the muck to piece together why that mattered to him so much at that point in time. So he let Matt pull at him and tell him to change clothes, so they could sleep together for a little while.

Matt came all the way to Brooklyn to harass Clint while he was slogging through brain-stew. He was visibly uncomfortable. He’d grown up in Hell’s Kitchen. He’d spent years at Columbia. He could deal with Midtown, to an extent, and he could tolerate a bit of the upper west side.

But Brooklyn?

He got confused. Lost. He sometimes spun in circles until Clint caught up with him and took his arm.

He didn’t like Brooklyn. Not for the people, but for what he described as ‘the sound.’

He didn’t say it was bad. He said it was ‘wrong.’ He didn’t like the sirens, they seemed to startle him. He tucked himself close to Clint and jumped anytime something or someone brushed past or accidently jostled him.

Nelson was the one who ended up telling Clint that Matt had a long, exhausting history of abuse. Child abuse. Domestic abuse. Verbal abuse. Bullying. Harassment.

The whole fucking gamut, honestly.

He’d grown up in foster care after his dad had been killed. He didn’t have a mom. He didn’t have family that he knew.

A lot of things started to make sense after that.

Like the way that Matt got uncomfortable when Clint mentioned his brother. The way that he seemed desperately worried about Kate. The way he was reluctant to be around Lucky.

The world was hostile to Matt. It always had been. It always would be.

Clint thought he got it.

He could read summaries of movies and only offer those without graphic violence to Matt. He could watch the way he talked about kids and parents. He could encourage Matt to tell him about how nice the nuns were at his halfway house.

He could get smiles out of doing these things. And he felt like he understood.

He’d really thought he understood.

There was a trunk in Matt’s wardrobe. Clint found him crying over it one time. Exactly one time.

He’d had something clutched to his chest.

Red silk.

He scrubbed at his face and shoved it away before Clint caught his arm and sat down on the floor with him and asked him to explain why he was upset.

He struggled with it.

He didn’t seem to like Clint saying the word ‘upset.’ He hated to argue, which was surprising for a lawyer. But if they disagreed on something and Clint pushed him, he’d shut down completely. He’d give in to whatever Clint was saying.

It was something that Clint had actually asked Page about after the third time it had happened.

She’d told him, suspiciously, that that was just how Matt was. He never told anyone how he was really feeling in case they got it in their heads to somehow change that, both for the good or the bad.

That explanation made all Matt’s smiles seem incredibly brittle all of the sudden.

But Clint worked past it.

He’d been there: child abuse, domestic abuse, just flat out abuse-abuse. He’d been there.

Matt let him touch the red silk. His father’s moniker was splayed across it.

It was a robe. A boxing robe. A theatrical thing. It and a set of gloves and a few knickknacks and pictures were all Matt had left of his life before he’d been orphaned and blinded.

He didn’t let Clint hold anything for too long for fear of the smell fading.

He put it all away and slammed the trunk lid and wiped furiously at his face. And then he’d pasted on a smile and asked Clint if he’d pour one out with him for his old man.

The trunk held the robe.

The trunk held the gloves.

The trunk held some pictures and a wedding band and an old, soft toy.

But Clint was, in these things, a professional.

Under the robe, under the gloves, under the pictures and the band and the toy was a helmet.

He knew it was there.

He wasn’t an idiot.

And unfortunately for Matt, he could see.

He’d seen the helmet around. He’d found it, hidden under the bathroom sink. Stuffed into a high cabinet.

He’d found it under the couch, just far enough under that a lazy hand wouldn’t accidentally brush against it.

He’d found it a good six or seven times if he was honest with himself. But he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Because Matt was so gentle and so malleable and so fragile.

He fit perfectly in Clint’s arms. He was feisty and bright and his laugh was contagious.

But Matt lied about _everything_. Clint wasn’t sure if he was the person he held in bed or if he was the person he was in court, or if he was that guy sobbing over an old set of gloves in the dark.

Clint wasn’t sure.

Nothing seemed real anymore.

The only thing that was real was the helmet. It had scars. It had lines where blades had been drawn across it. It had a mended mark from a bullet. Its paint was chipping. Its eyes were opaque; the inside was nothing but darkness.

There was only one man in that area who didn’t need to see out of his mask.

Clint took the helmet out of the trunk one day, finally, when he’d seen nothing but Matt’s brilliant smiles all week. When none of them seemed to reach his eyes.

Matt was struggling. Hurting. And trying to cover it up for someone who Clint didn’t know’s benefit.

It hurt to set it on the bed.

It hurt to settle down in bed next to it.

It hurt to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Knowing that Matt didn’t know he would be in. Knowing that he’d be caught off-guard.

But this was the consequence of a choice that Matt had made when he’d let Clint Barton, Hawkeye, internationally known counterintelligence operative, into his home.

Matt climbed in through the window, not the door.

He was gasping. Clint didn’t have to turn up his hearing aids to hear the sound of blood in his mouth, making him wheeze. He heard the scrabble of someone just barely standing move into the kitchen and turn on the sink.

He waited.

Matt would know.

Clint didn’t know how. But Daredevil knew things. And so Matt would know.

Eventually, the sink shut off. 

Clint sighed and wrapped an arm over the helmet.

“Clint?”

He closed his eyes.

It hurt to be lied to. It felt like nothing he ever did was enough for anyone. Not even this someone.

He’d been stupid to think he’d understood. Naïve. Like Tony. Well-meaning, but with blinkers on, so that he only saw that which he wanted to see.

“Clint?”

He swallowed hard.

He knew Matt was standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

He said nothing for a long, long time.

“You don’t have to stay,” Matt finally said softly. “I understand.”

He said it like he meant it. It was maybe the only honest thing he’d ever done in Clint’s presence.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Matt added after a moment, impossibly quietly. “Although, I’d understand if you had to, too.”

Clint hadn’t planned on crying that night. The tears came of their own will.

“I don’t understand,” he finally made himself creak.

He heard Matt’s intake of breath. A sniff.

He was crying, too.

Clint lifted his head to the doorway and saw now Matt’s dark shape standing in it, turned away. Shaking.

Devastated.

Just as Clint was.

Horrible. Secrets were horrible.

“I don’t understand,” Clint told him, lifting a hand.

He didn’t mean for his fingers to shake.

“Come explain?” he asked. “I’m dumb as shit, Matty. Please? Come explain.”

Matt stayed in the doorway for a long time. Shoulders shuddering. Sniffing.

He didn’t want to.

Clint felt the disappointment crash over him like a wave in the ocean. He let his hand fall.

“Okay,” he said. “You don’t have to.”

Matt was disgusting.

He was bleeding. Someone had split his lip. He was filthy. He’d slipped on a roof and fallen on the way home, but the thing that held Clint’s attention was the ring of dark bruises around the base of his pale, freckled neck.

“When I was little, I pushed a man out of the street,” he told Clint, fingers unable to bend with the ropes wrapped around his fists digging into them. “This truck nearly crashed into me, but it missed. It was carrying these barrels of acid. Some of it got into my eyes—onto my face. I lost—I lost—my dad—my dad—he tried to wipe it off—it was just a few seconds—it was only a second—”

The shaking was back. Full-body quaking this time.

Clint took the hand off his cheek and pressed a kiss on the knuckles that were visible. Matt shook harder than ever, as though the memory threatened to vibrate him apart.

“It blinded you,” Clint said for him. “Your dad tried to save you, but it blinded you.”

Matt choked out a breath and nodded hurriedly.

“He tried,” he murmured. “He always tried. He didn’t deserve to die, Clint. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have—I should—I should—have been better? Maybe if I’d—if I’d have not done that, we could have made it. He wouldn’t’ve died. I wouldn’t’ve killed him?”

Jesus.

Just.

Jesus. It was so much worse than Clint had thought.

“Matt,” he said softly. “This is hurting you.”

“I—I— _I know_ ,” Matt said. “But it has to. ‘Cause you—you deserve better.”

No. Oh, honey, no.

“After—after my dad—after he couldn’t clear it. Everything went away. I couldn’t see. But I could feel. Everything. A thousand times more. A hundred thousand times. It’s all too much. It’s always too much. But I can hear—within miles. Within Hell’s Kitchen, I can hear every siren. Every scream. In this building, every argument. Every cry, every flush, every fucking _tv show_. Birdsong’s the worst,” Matt grated out, laughing a little and sniffing. “It’s _horrible_ , Clint. It’s just horrible. How do people just listen to it? How? It’s—sorry. Sorry, you—I didn’t meant to offend.”

Every second made less sense.

Clint caught Matt’s wrist again.

“How can you know that?” he asked.

Matt laughed again, a bark. Ugly.

“Your heart,” he whispered. “I can hear your heart. It stutters. I can—in rooms, when there aren’t walls around, I can hear heart beats and I—when I know someone, I can—I can tell when their heart goes all wrong and it can mean different things.”

“So you can tell when people are lying?” Clint asked.

“Only some,” Matt said, falling over himself to qualify. “I have to know you. I have to know the beat. The, uh. Rhythm. Otherwise, I don’t know.” He trailed off. “You could just have been scared by a cat or something.”

Right.

“Is there? Anything else?” Clint asked, feeling a little dumb for pushing.

“Heat?” Matt said. “I, uh. I can know where uh, gestures and er, bodies are? When their heat moves around? It’s like—no. Uh. Maybe? I don’t know how to explain, I can’t see, I don’t know—uh. Um. UM.”

Okay, no. They were entering panicked/distressed territory.

It was like Matt thought that he had to tell Clint everything, right now, or else.

“You’re okay,” he promised. “You’re good, you don’t have to explain. I just—I don’t think I understand, but—”

“And smell,” Matt cut him off. “I can smell things better than most people. I can feel—touch? I can touch? I don’t know how to—uh. Oh! Sometimes, if I focus I can—I can read text? Like? Ink? On paper—like everyone else. You know. I can show you? I can—it’s not too much trouble. I can—I’m sure I’ve got something printed—uh. I mean. Not an advertisement though, they’re really--I don’t know how to explain. They all feel the same? All over. Nothing raised, so I can’t—I’m not explaining it well. I’m sorry, I’m—I’m not explaining anything well. I’m sorry—just give me—”

I’m sorry. That seemed like it was all this guy said.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You can leave me. I’m sorry. I can’t explain. I’m sorry.

It was too much.

“No,” Clint said, reaching out and grabbing Matt as he tried to scramble off the bed. Like he had to put on this show for Clint to believe him.

It was…disgusting.

“Matt,” he said. “Just. Stop.”

He felt the hand pulling at his arm stop.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”

Screw this.

“I think I need to go,” Clint said, slowly sitting up.

He felt Matt go tense all over. Heard his breath catch.

“Okay,” the guy gasped anyways. “Yeah. Of course. I’m sorry—I mean. Okay.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Clint said. “I just need to process this. That’s all I need to do. I’m coming back, alright? I’m not leaving you.”

“No, no. Of course. You’re—you can, you know. If it’s too—if I’m too—”

Matt cut himself off. He angled his face away from Clint again.

He said nothing more.

Clint couldn’t breathe in Matt’s apartment and it didn’t get better outside in the cooler air.

He’d thought he’d understood. He’d thought that it had been a violence thing. A poverty thing. An abuse thing.

An outlet. That was the word.

He’d thought that’s what all of this had been. Daredevil was just an outlet.

But Matt—

Matt was enhanced. Matt didn’t seem to have that word to describe himself, though. He was confused. He was scared. He didn’t fully seem to understand himself what was going on around him, just that it was and it had been for so long that that was how things were now.

How did he hide it, though?

He was profoundly disturbed. Like. Holy _shit_.

That kind of trauma—unthinkable. Matt hated bird song because it was too much for him to bear.

How could he live in a city then? There were cars everywhere. New Yorkers screamed like the best of them.

It was just—

Too much.

It was awful to think that ‘too much’ was how Matt himself described himself. It was the reason he seemed to have come to, to explain why he had to hide all this shit.

And worse, Clint _got it_.

It was a lot. It was literally too much. Actually too much.

How was he supposed to deal with it?

Could he even?

He was a legendary fuck-up. Legendary. People knew him as a fuck-up who waltzed onto the scene when you were least expecting it.

He fucked up his friendships. He fucked up his family. He fucked up his goddamn dog. Not to even get started on the flaming shitshow that was his own self.

Like, how could he bring all baggage and set it next to Matt who clearly, obviously needed something or someone just _stable_.

How were they supposed to make things work with both of them hiding shit from the other?

Did Matt even know what Clint really did? Did he know about Clint’s enemies? The brutality that came at the end of his bow? Did he know that Clint was the nightmare of so many people in this city?

That he had killed?

Did kill?

Would kill?

Daredevil had to know. Daredevil stood alongside Frank Castle, Deadpool, and Spiderman in these parts. He stood toe to toe with those people and information crashed through the undercity like currents.

He had to know.

And yet?

Wait.

And yet.

Wait, no.

Daredevil knew who Hawkeye was. He’d known from the start. Matt had known the day he’d met Clint who he was and what he did.

But he’d still kissed Clint first. And let him into his house. Into his bed. _His_ space. _His_ self-made life.

That was.

Wrong.

That wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right.

Everything was wrong. Everything was wrong.

He slept.

Sleeping helped.

Then Nat helped.

“I knew,” she revealed, settling on Clint’s bed with him.

“I hate you,” he told her, holding his head.

“I was too much for him,” she said.

It made Clint stop. He lifted his head and looked at her. She raised her lashes to meet his eyes.

“Red’s a complicated guy,” she told him. “He refused to open up to me. He put on this face that he thought I wanted, and I got mad. So I gave him…too much, I think, of myself back, and then I left. I was just so angry that he wouldn’t return the favor and was always coming in with important shit too late.”

Right.

That was fair.

Clint didn’t think he was mad, but he was hurt. And he could see Nat reacting to a similar situation with anger.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked her.

She sighed.

“Because you two are good for each other,” she said. “You wear a mask, too, Clint. And it’s been slipping a little. You let him into your house when you were having an episode. And you let him bully you. And you’ve been trying to understand him. It’s like you care about something—for real. Not just yourself. Not just the dog. It’s been good for you.”

He was really that much of a hopeless case, wasn’t he?

“Clint,” Nat scolded. “I don’t stay friends with people who I think are hopeless.”

He buried his face in his hands.

“What do I do, Nat?” he asked.

Nat sighed again.

“I don’t know,” she said.

There was a pause.

“Do you lo--?” she started.

“Yes,” Clint said. “Fucking _yes_. I think. I guess. I don’t know. I don’t even know who he is. Maybe only Nelson knows who he is.”

Nat fell quiet again.

“Clint,” she said. “Are Hawkeye and Clint Barton the same person?”

Wh—

Yeah. Obviously.

“What about depressed-you and Clint Barton. Are they the same person?”

Yes. Again, obviously.

“So maybe Red—sorry—Matt—no, that feels wrong, I only called him Matthew--Maybe Matthew and Daredevil are also allowed to be the same person. And all those faces, those are him, too, you know; a version of himself that he’s been making out of what he has for you. Maybe that’s not so wrong as it feels. Maybe that’s normal and we just don’t get it because we’re too used to switching through faces that aren’t ours.”

That was too many words.

Clint was tired. So tired.

“Are you depressed?” Nat asked.

Yeah. He was.

“Don’t stay depressed.”

He’d try not to.

Three days he managed to lose. He only gained them back because there was a knock on the door that didn’t go away when he didn’t answer. Instead, his living room window opened.

He felt a flame of fury burn across his chest before it was suffocated by the nothingness.

What did it matter that Daredevil was breaking into his house?

What did anything matter?

“You look like hell.”

Clint flung an arm over his eyes.

“You can’t even see,” he said.

He could imagine Matt standing at the door, like he had in his own apartment, fidgeting.

“Get up.”

That was not the tone he’d been expecting.

“Matt,” he said. “Not now. Not today just—”

“GET. Up. Please.”

His arm fell a bit and he blinked up at the ceiling in surprise.

Matt never raised his voice. Well, as Matt, anyways. Daredevil seemed to scream his heart out—

“Clint, I’m going to ask you one more time and then I’m going to put a hole in your fucking wall.”

That was anger, that was.

“Alright, alright, I’m gettin’ up,” Clint sighed, heaving his body up into sitting. “Christ. Between you and—”

Matt punched him.

It hurt. It radiated out of his jaw.

He couldn’t move.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” he finally found it in himself to say.

“Fight me,” Matt said.

What the hell was he on about? He was wearing a collared shirt. Loafers. He was a jacket away from a full suit.

“Why aren’t you mad? Get _mad_ ,” Matt barked at him.

“I don’t have enough feeling to get mad,” Clint said.

“Get mad,” Matt insisted. “Fight me.”

“No. No, Matt. This isn’t how this works,” Clint said. “You can be mad, but you can’t just fight things away, alright?”

“And you can’t just sleep them away. And you can’t just go on pretending that everything’s fine and you can’t just _accept_ that life is shit and people are shit and I lied to you, Clint,” Matt said.

His lip threatened to tremble.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I lie to everyone. I have to. Because I can’t stop being Him. I’ve tried. I’ve tried a thousand times and none of it has ever stuck. And I thought— _stupidly,_ apparently—that you’d maybe understand that. But I was wrong. So you can tell me to fuck off and go die and whatever you want. I get it. But the silence? For days? No. No, I’ve done silence for _years_ , and I’m not doing it anymore.”

Clint opened his mouth, but Matt didn’t let him speak.

“That’s how I got here. That’s how I got this fucked up, Clint,” he snapped. “Since I was born, everyone has just left and I’ve gotten no explanation. For anything. But I finally gave you an explanation, just like you asked, and then you left like the rest of them. Why is it that I always have to be the one who explains and everyone else just gets to leave?”

“Matt,” Clint sighed. “Listen, I get it.”

“DO YOU?” Matt snapped.

The question made Clint recoil.

“You always say that you get it,” Matt continued, pacing now. “But I think that’s just your way of keeping the peace. Some things, you can’t get. This thing you’re dealing with right now? Depression? Guess what? I _get it_. My shit? No. You don’t get it. You’ll never get it. You don’t have to get it. There’s only one other person on this planet who really, actually gets it, and I can’t talk to her. Ever again. You know why? Because last time I talked to her, we ended up in a suicide pact at the bottom of a fucking sinkhole in the middle of Midtown, Clint. So I never expected you to get it and I thought this would be different. And it _is_ different and I just--I’m scared. And I’m sorry. And I don’t want you to leave, but if you want to, just tell me. And for the love of god, just give me _something_ because otherwise you’ll be just like everyone else. And I—I can’t cope with that.”

Matt finally stopped talking. The birds outside chirped. He showed no sign of noticing. He kept his face directed at Clint on the bed.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Clint finally said.

“An explanation,” Matt snipped. “Why’d you leave? Why?”

“Matt.”

“TELL ME.”

Jesus. That yell was hoarse. Gravelly almost. Raw.

“I just got overwhelmed, Matt, that was it,” Clint felt himself suddenly blurt out. “You’ve just got a lot of shit going on and I don’t know how to cope. That’s what it is, alright?”

Matt’s face stayed completely blank.

“Get up,” he said.

“No. Just go,” Clint said.

“Get up,” Matt said. “Go take a shower and don’t speak to me.”

“Dude, I—”

Matt didn’t move.

“Take a fucking shower, Barton,” he said, determined. “Just do it.”

Matt came over every evening, despite making it abundantly clear that he hated Brooklyn. He refused to direct any of this information at Clint but set about directing it at the couch while he deep-cleaned it, the dog while he dragged him into the tub, and the countertops while he set into them with a sponge and a toothbrush.

Clint told him to leave and got told to go fuck himself and get back in the bedroom where he belonged.

Kate came over once while Matt was waging war on what he’d determined was the ‘filth box’ that was Clint’s fridge. She scrambled into the bedroom and locked the door behind her.

“Clint,” she hissed. “There’s an intruder.”

“Tell me about it,” Clint said.

“You wanna do something about him, or what?” Kate demanded.

“There’s no doing anything about anything,” Clint groaned. “Daredevil wants to clean my house and nothing’s going to stop him apparently.”

Kate blinked.

“That’s Daredevil?” she asked.

Clint flung himself over onto his other side and covered his face with a pillow.

“Wait. What? No. I thought—I thought that was your booty-call?” Kate said.

“WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?”

She threw herself over Clint’s body to hide from the rage-monster right outside the bedroom door.

“Oh my god,” she whimpered. “What’re we gonna do?”

At that point, Clint was leaving it to Fate’s hands.

“Dude, no,” Kate said. “You can’t leave Daredevil in your house, man. He’s gonna paint the whole thing red and then set up an altar or something.”

The only altar Matt was going to set up was one to the Virgin Mary with Clint’s luck. The man was Irish-Catholic to a fault.

“Clint,” Kate said firmly, grabbing his face. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

Why should he?

“He’s a _devil_ ,” Kate said.

“He’s a force of fucking nature is what he is,” Clint sighed. “Leave me here to rot in peace, Katie-Kate. Rescue the dog if you’re so inclined.”

Kate huffed at him. Clint felt her shift up to survey the door.

“I can do this,” she told herself. “I’m Hawkeye. I ain’t afraid of no Hornhead.”

It had been an hour.

Clint sat up.

The front door hadn’t slammed closed. Kate was still there.

He frowned.

He rolled out of bed and cracked the door but couldn’t hear shit outside it. Why couldn’t he—oh. The hearing aid batteries were finally dead.

Bummer.

How long had he been wallowing?

He stepped out into the hall and noted a lack of pizza boxes and discarded mail.

Suspicious.

He flattened himself against the wall dividing the living room from the kitchen before checking inside, and then froze.

Matt was still there, stirring what appeared to be cup of tea now, moving his lips in Kate’s direction.

Kate held a matching, steaming mug.

Clint didn’t own tea.

He knew he didn’t own tea. What in god’s name had happened to his kitchen? Where was the coffee maker? Where did all the paperwork on the counter go? That was important shit. He had tenant agreements on there.

Matt turned his face abruptly in his direction.

He said something, but Clint couldn’t make it out.

Kate said something back to him.

Matt rolled his whole head and plonked his mug down on the counter. He shoved past Clint with just his fingertips brushing the wall as he stormed over to the hall closet and threw it open. He didn’t bother turning on the light as he disappeared into it to rummage around.

Clint looked from the closet to the kitchen.

Kate signed the word ‘batteries’ to him.

‘Batteries?’ he signed back. ‘Why?’

‘Yours are dead,’ she signed. ‘DD doesn’t understand sign.’

‘That helps nothing at all,’ he told her.

A hand slapped him in the center of his back and he leapt up and lurched around to get hands on the body.

Matt was unimpressed to be slammed up against the wall. He didn’t even flinch. He held up a box and pointed more or less at it.

Oh.

Batteries.

Matt touched his ear with his free hand, still not acknowledging Clint’s pinning him to the wall by his throat.

…Right.

Okay.

Clint took the box and withdrew his arm. Matt stretched his neck and bared his teeth at him before abandoning him in the hallway holding the box. He seemed to say something to Kate, but he didn’t turn around from the stove.

Kate turned from his back towards Clint and signed ‘I like him.’

He could only stare at the box in his hand in hopes that maybe it would carry him through this.

“Matt,” he said with hearing aids working like a dream.

“We need to figure out a system,” Matt said, pushing a third cup of tea—no, seriously, where did that shit come from?—towards him across his empty counter.

“Matt, I had tenancy agreements on here,” Clint said. “You can’t just move shit. It’s—”

“Organized,” Matt said. “You are now the owner of two filing cabinets. Congratulations. You’re almost competent.”

He—what?

“Like I was saying,” Matt continued while Kate giggled into her hands at the table. “We need a system because I can’t make you understand me when your whistlers die.”

His…whistlers?

“The aids,” Matt said. “They whistle.”

No shit?

“No shit,” Matt said. “This lovely lady has helpfully informed me that there is something called ‘tactile sign language.’ We should study up.”

Kate beamed at Clint.

‘Study up,’ she mouthed. ‘I _love him_.’

Awful.

Clint scrubbed at the back of his head.

“Matt, you’re mad,” he said. “I don’t know what this is, but you’re obviously mad. And I get that your way of coping with that is…cleaning, but you have no obligation to take care of me. This is overkill. This is—”

“Me showing you that we—me and DD—can and do exist in the same space at the same time, _Barton_ ,” Matt sniffed. “It’s your move.”

There was a pause.

“This is DD,” Clint said stiffly.

“I can break your door and smash your windows if that helps,” Matt said. “But I’d rather not since I just cleaned the place.”

“This isn’t DD,” Clint said. “This is just you doin’ shit you don’t need to be—”

“What will it take then?” Matt demanded.

“It won’t take anything,” Clint groaned. “I’m not—it’s not about DD, Matt.”

“What is it about then?” Matt asked.

Kate rested her chin on her knuckles and lifted an eyebrow at Clint.

She didn’t need to be here for this.

“It’s about—” Clint started. “It’s about—Look.”

“Can’t. Explain with words,” Matt snapped.

Aggravating little shit.

“I’m—I’m leaving that,” Clint said. “This whole thing isn’t about DD. It’s about the fact that you need someone stable in your life. And I’m not that, okay? I don’t do stable. I don’t do happy families. I can’t give you the explanations that you want. Don’t you see that? I’m one step above Deadpool on the morality ladder, man. That’s all I am.”

Matt pursed his lips. Lucky then took the apparent ceasefire to come bustling past Clint’s legs. He paused, came back and lolled his tongue up at him, panting happily.

He smelt like doggy toothpaste.

What the fuck, Murdock.

“Mr. Barton,” Matt said primly. “I didn’t climb into your lap because I thought you were stable.”

Clint’s head popped up before he could stop it.

“Why did you climb in my lap then, huh?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”

“You first,” Matt said. “What do you want from me?”

A new silence hung.

Clint didn’t actually know what he wanted. He’d just—yeah, no. He hadn’t known what he’d wanted or needed over the last few months. He’d just liked having Matt in his life. Filling gaps. Being close. Being warm and friendly and close.

It had been nice.

“Clint,” Matt sighed after a long time, “You’re making this so much harder than it has to be.”

Clint sniffed and puffed up in offense.

“Well alright then, lawyer boy,” he said. “You tell me. What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Matt sounded out for him, long and slow. “And do you know how liberating that is?”

Wh—

What?

“I got a problem,” Matt said, almost brashly, waltzing around the counter in Clint’s direction. “Where I got all these abandonment issues. I’ve been chasing bodies since I was fifteen, trying to find meaning in ‘em. But I _told_ you. I’ve been working on my mental bullshit for a while now, and I don’t _need_ anything from you. But you pop in and do things for me anyways. And that’s just nice, Barton. So I like you. And I want to be nice back to you. And yeah, maybe I’m not just some pretty-boy, normal lawyer, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you. Is that so hard to believe?”

Yes.

Absolutely.

100%.

Matt made a sound of disgust that made Kate giggle.

“It’s always idiots,” Matt told her. “I haven’t fallen for a single smart man in my life.”

“That’s what the Widow says,” Kate told him.

“That’s rude as hell,” Matt volleyed back. “I graduated summa cum laude. We’re at the same level. I just have no social skills.”

Kate reveled in her newfound gossip. Clint felt left out.

“You’re telling me that you fucked me ‘cause I’m pretty and nice and that’s it?” he asked.

Matt lifted an eyebrow his way over the top of his glasses frames.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”

Clint’s brain told him to check the window for flying pork.

“What else do you want from me?” Matt said irritably. “Did you want happy families? Did you want someone stable? Something serious? Is DD really too much for you, the great and masterful Hawkeye to cope with?”

Was that an insult?

“Yes,” Matt deadpanned while Kate scream-laughed into her hands.

“You lied to me,” Clint pointed out.

“Like I said,” Matt said. “You’re not special. I lie to everyone, and anyways, I already apologized for that, not to mention it’s not what I asked you.”

Clint floundered.

The argument in the past seemed to be tumbling even further into it with every passing second. Lucky had laid down on his foot. Everything was still syrupy with depression.

“I—” he started, then trailed off.

What did he want from Matt? Like for real? What did he want?

“We just? Fit?” he finally managed to say. “I like that we fit? And you don’t usually call me an idiot? And I guess it’s really easy to make you happy? And that’s kinda relaxing?”

“Aww,” Kate murmured down at Lucky. He flopped over her way and wagged his tail.

Matt huffed.

“So it was never about DD,” he said.

Thoughts of his fingers brushing against that damn horned helmet time and time again flooded Clint’s mind.

He hadn’t done anything.

He’d had so many opportunities.

“I guess not,” he admitted.

Matt hummed.

“So it was mainly the trauma,” he said. “Good, then we’re back on the same page.”

Clint frowned.

“Why’d you let Fisk do that to you back then?” he asked before he could stop himself. “If you’re—if you’ve got these powers and all this training, why do you let him and everyone else keep traumatizing you?”

Matt’s spine went stiff and then he dropped it.

“First off, it’s none of your concern,” he said. “But I don’t _let_ him do anything to me. Fuckhead realized that he can drug me a few months back and it’s been the bane of my existence ever since.”

Oh. Well that explained a lot.

“Does this mean Daredevil’s one of us now?” Kate interrupted.

Clint scowled.

“Go home,” he told her.

“Is your boyfriend like my step-mentor?” she asked.

Matt smirked at her.

“Do you want me to be?” he asked.

Kate scooted to the front of her chair.

“I heard you’re training Spidey,” she said, “Teach me how to break him in half.”

Matt laughed. Clint’s chest swelled. It felt like it had been years since he’d heard it. He wanted to tell Kate to leave. He wanted to ask for more answers. For more time to piece together the bits of information Matt was still placing in his hands.

But there was a fine line to walk now. That boundary had been marked and it still felt uncomfortable and fragile.

It was easier to just listen to the laugh and accept that maybe things were okay. Maybe they could actually make this work again.

“Spidey’s a walking amateur right now,” Matt told Kate sweetly. “Knocking down that deck of cards isn’t worth your effort.”

Kate snapped her face Clint’s way and viciously signed ‘if you break up, I’m keeping him, not you.’

Which was so fucking rude.

So goddamn—

“What the hell did you do to my house?” Clint demanded.

Matt’s idea of love and support and a show of commitment, it turned out, was doing everything for other people that he refused to do for himself.

“Foggy tells me that I should observe and learn from my behavior,” he told Clint lazily an hour later, resting happily on his chest and kicking a foot back and forth.

“Do you?” Clint asked him.

Matt dropped his head onto his chest and hummed into Clint’s collarbone.

“I like your apprentice,” he redirected.

“She ain’t anyone’s but her own,” Clint told him.

Matt hummed again.

“She’s cute,” he said.

“Annoying,” Clint told him.

“Good for you,” Matt said.

“People keep saying that,” Clint huffed.

He folded his fingers in the small of Matt’s back.

“Are we really good?” he asked after a lull.

Matt didn’t lift his face.

“We’re good,” he said.

Excellent.

Beautiful.

Stunning.

“Clint?”

“Hm?”

“You smell like depression sweat.”

Ah. Perhaps not so stunning.

“Take a shower.”

“But you cured me,” Clint joked. “Don’t you want to revel in it?”

Matt planted his chin on Clint’s sternum.

“I didn’t cure you,” he said. “I kicked the underlying cause for a week until it gave up. Go take a shower.”

Mmmm.

Well.

See, he _could_ do that. Or they could have athletic sex on the couch?

Matt didn’t move. His expression was scathing.

“I’m just sayin’,” Clint said. “ _You’re_ a parkour expert. _I’m_ a parkour expert. We could make something of this situation we’ve found ourselves in.”

Matt heaved himself up off Clint’s chest with what sounded like monumental effort.

“I never should have told you shit,” he said.

“Is that a yes?” Clint needled. “You gonna show me the devil’s moves, Mr. Man in the Mask?”

Matt turned his face down his way and after a beat, smiled.

It was sharp.

“I’m going to carry you to the tub,” he said.

Pft.

“Go on then, champ,” Clint said. “I’ll watch.”

Matt’s grin got sharper.

Okay.

Lesson one of god knew how many: Freckles is stronger than he looks.

Lesson two of god knew how many: things don’t have to be so complicated.

Clint made a note of it in his phone next to the one he’d made with the Punisher.

**Author's Note:**

> Two notes: 1) I wrote the majority of this in one day, so if the plot wavers, don't mind me. I'm just being indulgent. 2) when Matt passed out from slamming his hand into the door, it's not from that, it's because he's already unsteady from another wound and that was just the icing on the cake for him (as Claire is about to beat out of him) ❤


End file.
